A wonderful idea surfaced on the diaries yesterday.
Juliagoolia floated the idea of 'grocery store blogging'. In essence, this is where people post flyers on grocery store bulletin boards that offer a clear, concise message in terms that appeals to people who shop at that particular store. Here are some potential examples:
HYPOCRITICAL WASHINGTON REPUBLICANS CHANGE RULES
In the early 1990's Republicans put in a rule that said a congressional leader who's been indicted of a crime must step down. Now that Republican Tom Delay appears to be heading towards indictment, they get rid of that rule. What do Washington Republicans really stand for?
WASHINGTON REPUBLICANS SEEKING TO ERASE YOUR MORTGAGE DEDUCTION
The White House and congressional Republicans are seeking to do away with the tax deduction on your mortgage. Some tax relief, huh?
WASHINGTON REPUBLICANS WANT TO SNOOP ON YOUR TAX RETURNS
Congressional Republicans attempted to gain the power to not only gain access to any citizens tax returns, but also to make them public. Do you value your privacy? We sure do. Vote Democrat.
I propose taking this one step further. Let's use the power of the DKos community to make this happen. Here's what I propose:
1 - Every other Monday on DKos, I will post a Diary for the purpose of deciding what message(s) to focus on that week. Essentially, through discussion, people can post their ideas, modify other ideas, and so on.
2 - On the Wednesday following that Monday, I will post another Diary with a poll that will allow us to vote on the different ideas and select the ones to use.
3 - I have set up a listserv (sign up here). After we have decided what message to use, I will send a PDF file to the mailing list. The benefit of using a separate mailing list to distribute the message is that we can expand the effort beyond the DKos community (essentially anybody with email) while still keeping the decision making process somewhat 'in house'.
4 - The list members can then print copies of the flyer and post them wherever they can. Grocery Stores, Parks, etc. Anywhere there is a public bulletin board.
The big benefit of this plan is that, if we are smart about our messages, it will be an instant counter to the right wing propaganda machine that dominates the heartland. Most people who voted for Bush are not 'wingnuts', but rather people who aren't especially interested in the details of politics. These are people who rarely get beyond the soundbite level of attention, which is why the GOP machine takes the strategy they do. They create perceptions of words like "liberal" and then all the GOP candidate has to do is access the subconscious perception in a soundbite, and their work is done.
What we need to do is craft messages that are short and concise, where someone walking by them will see them and get the impression 'oh yeah, that makes sense', and then likely forget all about the message. But in this process, we will have created our own 'subconscious triggers'. But then during campaigns, our candidates can access these triggers in their soundbites.
Look, I wish that American politics could be an open, honest, rational debate about the issues of the day, but that's just not they way the game is played anymore (if it ever was). Most people are not interested in the complexities of the issues. This doesn't make them bad people, but just means they are disinterested in politics. What we have to do is stop relying on the rational American voter to decipher the truth for themselves. We basically have to bring it to them in places that the GOP machine can't subvert (can you imagine Rush railing against the 'liberal grocery store bulletin boards'?!)
Let's make this happen!
Update [2004-11-21 7:4:7 by Aethern]:
Because of the rapid nature of the recent diaries box, I am going to repost this several times until Monday's discussion for the purposes of exposing as many potential participants as possible, as well as updating things when good ideas get mentioned.
Also, a poster in the previous diary entry had the idea of tying letters to the editors into this. I think that is a positive idea, and perhaps if this takes off, then we can send talking points for LTE's alongside the bulletin board flyers.
Keep the good ideas coming for how to effectively organize this. The GOP message machine doesn't rest, we can't afford to either.